Letters to The Editor: GOP policies put middle class at risk; illegal immigrants are burden on the health care system; and more

Richard Dandurand of Chicopee is concerned that illegal immigrants being placed in the universal healthcare system would create an barrier to medical care for American taxpayers. (AP File Photo)

Illegal immigrants burden health care

American taxpayers, get ready for the granddad all of fiscal nightmares which President Obama and his supporters are currently in the process of creating.

Just picture the 3 or 4 million legal and illegal immigrants coming into this country every year, as is currently the vogue, automatically being placed under the free universal health care umbrella at absolutely no costs to them.

Our hospitals and emergency rooms will so be crammed to the hilt that you, the American Taxpayer, may very well be sent home without treatment because of the overwhelmed medical personnel at that time.

-RICHARD H. DANDURAND, Chicopee

GOP policies put middle-class at risk

Associated PressPaul Bloom of Longmeadow is concerned that the GOP's plans for Social Security and Medicare would turn the nation's elderly into welfare recipients. (AP file photo)

Does Republican House Speaker John Boehner, realize that if he insists on cutting Social Security and Medicare he will be making the biggest mistake of his career?

Social Security and Medicare taxes have been the public’s retirement insurance for many years. To remove or change them significantly would find our retirees becoming welfare cases.

The last two terms of Republican administration took a $1 trillion surplus and gave it away to the very rich. Then they went crazy and cut taxes on the very wealthy. To do so, they borrowed the Social Security and Medicare funds (that had been built on taxes of the public) and now they want to avoid paying back these loans by privatizing them so the insurance industry can grow richer.

Millions will not be able to pay the premiums.

Their investments in these funds will disappear from the retirement they paid for. The only way to reduce our debt is to tax those who are avoiding taxes like GE, which made billions of profit last year and never paid a penny in taxes.

GE is not alone. The big corporations can avoid taxes, and do in many ways. The Supreme Court’s ruling that corporations are “ citizens” was the worst ruling ever made, and it was done by politically inclined jurists, who were paying off those who voted them in. Our Congress is not ours (the people), but is run by the big corporations like AT&T and Verizon. They have already spent big money to get their own representatives elected.

Who do you think those elected that way are really beholden to? Not the public’s best interest, but those who bought their way into office. The United States will be a third-rate nation if the public doesn’t realize what’s happening. We must vote against such shenanigans, and elect true patriots. If not, in a few decades, there will be only the rich and poor, no middle-class. And no real democracy will be left in our country for our children and their children.

God Forbid.

-PAUL BLOOM, Longmeadow

Congress must read the bills it passes

“The American people may have voted for a divided government, but they didn’t vote for a dysfunctional government.”

I heard President Obama make this statement on two different occasions. I would like to inform the president that some of us may have voted for a government that would be transparent. More importantly, some of us may have voted for a government where the “ruling class” (namely Congress) would read bills before they passed them.

I resented being told “We have to pass this health bill so we will know what is in it” because it seems to suggest that the American people are either gullible or downright stupid! The government continues to function in this very same way when they recently passed the bill to raise the debt limit with only a few members of Congress having read the bill.
SUSAN J. DANTON, Springfield

McCarthy’s column hits the funny bone

After enjoying so many of Richard McCarthy’s stories/memories, it’s time to say thank you to The Republican, for printing various perspective news reviews, Letters to the Editor, etc., and the Aug. 3 column by McCarthy for getting my day off to a great start.

Many days I definitely need a good laugh after catching up on local/area/world news, whatever. McCarthy’s “Pass the Popcorn” literally put me in stitches.
SHIRLEY CARPENTER, Wilbraham